Monday, September 9, 2013

Lost in the Shadows by Selah Janel and S.H. Roddey: Spotlight and Excerpt

Journey with authors Selah Janel and S.H. Roddey to a world where every idea is a possibility and every genre an invitation. In this collection of forty-seven short stories, lines blur and worlds collide in strange and wonderful new ways. Get lost with the authors as they wander among fantasy, horror, science fiction, and other speculative musings.

Shadows can’t hurt you, and sometimes it’s all right to venture off the path.

Genre: various speculative genres

Length: 300 pages

Format: Kindle, Paperback (Nook and PDF available from authors)

Publisher: Published by the authors

Beltane in the Modern World

by Selah Janel

It was a dark and stormy night and the fairies took over the stripper pole. It was the only recourse when Beltane fell on a moonless, rainy eve and the last Maypole in town had been bulldozed decades ago to make way for a rest stop. It wasn't the best solution, to be sure, but tradition had to be kept and the local strip was closer to the Faerie mound than the nearest field. Quietly, they emerged from what unsuspecting mortals took to be an over-sized speed bump misplaced in a back alley. Through the years they had adapted to life in the city, so pixies and elves, brownies and sylphs, redcaps and trolls emerged from their underworld home, all dressed for a night in the seedier part of town.

They grouped together in a lump, all staring up at the flashing sign for Tit-tania's with eyes that were blue, green, yellow, orange, and black. Round and slit pupils widened and contracted at the convenient name. It was all the sign they needed that they were where they needed to be.

The mortals inside never knew what hit them, especially when gold coins pelted the dancers into fleeing the stage. The elfin maidens who took their places may have been dressed in club wear, but they moved with the grace of the ages-old and whirled around the poles with a fire and grace that no mortal could replicate. Pixies swirled about their heads like sparks of light, so fast that their movements burned a trail of an after-image around the dancers' heads and shapely figures, the brilliant streaks mingling with the long, swishing hair.

The brownies chugged beer since no ale was available, and trolls watched gaping mortal men out of the corner of their eyes. The age of sacrifice and tithe was over, but if one of the humans reached a grubby hand towards a Fae maiden, then they were more than happy to remind the fool why they were unworthy.

Businessmen, young men who were barely out of boyhood, old men with nothing better to do...they all gaped in awe at the display going on around them. After a while, the creatures in the audience joined hands and circled the perimeter of the club in a dance as old as time. A particularly mischievous sprite cut off the blasting music and poised itself at the edge of the stage, pipes in hand. Another soon joined it with a lyre, and another with a lute. A pixie produced a hand drum and joined the makeshift band, providing a joyful, driving rhythm. The sweet music drew the spurned human women back towards the stage to watch, tears streaming down their faces as they viewed the elegance they'd never have. Their human audience stared, unable to reach for wallets. They didn't need to. Their admiration was something the celebrating Folk hadn't had for a long, long time.

Into the night they danced and celebrated, invoking envy, nostalgia, and a heartbreak for the old days. Troll and lawyers guzzled liquor together, brownies hit on strippers jokingly, hobgoblins compared notes with the manager, and all celebrated and danced to the ancient music, enjoying the holiday though most mortals in the place didn’t remember that it existed.

Just as fast as the Folk had arrived, they disappeared. Leaves were left where their coins had fallen and none of the club's patrons could rightly remember what had happened or how much time had passed. They only had a strange memory of joy and an even stranger heartbreak of missing something they could not name.

From the front it appeared no different than any other house on the 200-block of Downing Street – a well-kept two story monument standing as a proud testament to pre-1900’s architecture. Festive decorations adorned the front porch while spooky blow-up caricatures lined the steps like undead marching soldiers. Even a pumpkin graced the front lawn, hiding inside it a peeping Frankenstein. Orange and black lights blinked along the trim of the wide porch day and night without fail. Hidden in the front hedges was a motion sensor that exuded an eerie laugh each time someone passed by. Many people paused to gaze at the spectacle. Some took pictures, but nobody ever stopped. Just because it was six days after Halloween with no change in scenery didn’t mean the still-standing decorations were that unusual.

No, it just meant that the owners of the house were dead.

If the passersby were to look closely they would have noticed that the broken door jamb was real, and that the dark trail marring the bright-white boards of the steps was blood, and it led across the threshold. If they were to push open the ruined door they would notice other things out of place – a broken crystal goblet and an overturned bottle of scotch to start. The trail would continue through the house into the kitchen where a once-beautiful blonde woman lay, face up in a pool of blood that had long-since oozed from the angry gash across her throat. From there bloody footprints would lead upstairs where her husband lay sprawled on the landing, almost completely disemboweled. Intestines would be strung along the banister much like the lights out front. His eyes would still be open, staring sightlessly ahead.

But nobody would witness these gruesome sights, because nobody paid attention. Nobody would stop to see what was wrong. Nobody would care.

At least, not until Christmas.

Selah Janel

Selah Janel has been blessed with a giant imagination since she was little and convinced that fairies lived in the nearby state park or vampires hid in the abandoned barns outside of town. Her appreciation for a good story was enhanced by a love of reading, the many talented storytellers that surrounded her, and a healthy curiosity for everything. Her e-books The Other Man and Holly and Ivy are published through Mocha Memoirs Press with more to come. Her work has also been included in The MacGuffin, The Realm Beyond, Stories for Children Magazine, the anthology The Big Bad: an Anthology of Evil from Dark Oak Press, and the upcoming anthology Thunder on the Battlefield from Seventh Star Press. Olde School, the first book in her new series The Kingdom City Chronicles is scheduled to release from Seventh Star Press later this year. She likes her music to rock, her vampires lethal, her fairies to play mind games, and her princesses to hold their own.

South Carolina native S.H. Roddey has been writing for fun since she was a child and still enjoys building worlds across the speculative fiction spectrum filled with mystery and intrigue. She brings to the literary world a unique blend of humor, emotion, and wild ideas filled with dark themes and strong characters. In addition to writing she is also a voracious reader, wanna-be chef, and video game addict with two full-time jobs: administrative social media professional, and mom to two cats, a teenager, and a precocious toddler with an affinity for computer keyboards.

For more information on Susan, her imagination, and the things she writes:

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